


Now That I've Found You

by Fenix21



Series: S12E1 Keep Calm and Carry On Coda Collection [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Big Brother Dean, Brother Feels, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Fix-it, Episode: s12e01 Keep Calm and Carry On, Hurt!Sam, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Wincest - Freeform, almost psychic bond, brother cuddles, episode coda, soul mates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 03:34:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8312401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: One thing the British MOL should learn right away is, you never take Sam Winchester away from his brother.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, it will really help you out to read [Until I Reach You](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8297632) first as this is pretty much part two. I didn't actually plan on part two, but I was kind of getting the feeling I might be drawn and quartered lest I get poor Sammy home safe to his Dean, and so. :)) I hope this satisfies all those outstanding cravings for brother feels. 
> 
> I rushed to write it on purpose before they aired the next episodes because I was 100% sure I'd be disappointed with the writers outcome, so yes, I've completely ignored all the sneak peeks.

Mary had found a large wingback in the library in which to curl up with a thick, leather bound journal notating some of the history of this mythic Men of Letters to which both her sons belonged apparently through her husband’s blood. Cas had attempted to guide her to a guest room, to offer her coffee and food in an overly solicitous manner that reminded her of a foreigner trying to mime the appropriate  elements of the culture in which he found himself  immersed. It was almost amusing but for his sincere earnestness that lent his actions a sad kind of sweetness. She politely declined and went browsing through the stacks in search of something that might give her at least a broad-stroke view of the world of which she was now a part. 

There hadn’t been much, not when she admitted to herself that what she was really looking for was some connection to family, but she _had_ found this sort of impromptu, unofficial genealogy. She would have liked something more recent—pictures, old letters, anything that had the touch of John or her boys, but she wasn’t going snooping in a place that didn’t belong to her, no matter Dean had given her free reign, and she wasn’t going to bother him either. 

The angel had been right, she thought in retrospect, about giving her eldest son time to cope with the loss of his brother, even if it was only temporary, and Christ she hoped it _was_ temporary, because no one could live long with the kind of intense fury and hunger she had glimpsed in Dean’s eyes. She didn’t claim to understand it, but it did frighten her. It scared the hell out of her, made her wonder what had become of her sweet baby Sammy, and how John had survived her death that it lead him to let his sons become this. 

 

Cas sat dutifully in front of the laptop watching the random numbers scroll on the screen and lines sketch themselves back and forth across the global map in the background. He understood little of it. Sam had attempted an explanation at one point, and Cas had listened carefully, but Netflix was still about the limit of his technological handling. He knew Dean would want to be made aware the moment Sam’s location was determined, though, so he sat watch silently.

Mary was across the room, tucked into a chair in the corner. She seemed comfortable enough, glancing up at him once in a while with a small smile. He nodded his acknowledgement and went back to watching the screen. He did not mean to loom over her like a guard dog, and he hoped she did not feel he was attempting to restrict her movements in any way, but he also did not want her wandering into things for which she was ill prepared. 

Her sons’ relationship for one.

Cas was privy to the Winchester bothers’ mythic and legendary love for one another only through the vantage point of Heaven. They had never divulged or discussed their true feelings with him, and he had conscientiously kept their secret from the world and from them that he even knew about it. Mary’s return, though, was bound to alter the algorithm by which they lived, and Cas wanted to protect that until they had a chance to center themselves and resolve a way to tell her, if such were even possible. 

He sighed and pinched at the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes for a moment. Angels didn’t need rest or sustenance, and they did not grow anxious or weary, but Cas felt a certain weight of helplessness on his shoulders right now, as he tuned into the ever present whisper in the back of his mind that was Dean’s fervent prayer to find Sam alive. 

Dean was probably not aware he was doing it. He had never voluntarily prayed except to call Cas in times of need, and he certainly had never addressed his needs to God, except in the one moment of desperation that had brought him—Chuck—out of hiding at last to face off with his chaos-inciting sibling once and for all. Despite that, Dean’s near constant silent litany to save Sam, look after Sam, bring Sam home, through the years of their lives, could easily be considered praying in a round about fashion. Because God had chosen not to answer, or that his brothers and sisters had ignored the pleas, did not mean they were not deserving prayers, and never more deserving than now.

Cas had barely recovered himself from seeing Dean alive, and he certainly hadn’t had time to process the magnitude of how that might have happened. He couldn’t image the tumult in Dean’s heart at this moment as he tried to sort through the overwhelming developments of his mother’s reappearance, his own continued existence, and Sam’s disappearance. It was a lot for anyone to handle. In true Winchester fashion, Dean was doing just that. It was no wonder at all that his focus was on Sam, and if Mary felt slighted by his single-mindedness of the moment in recovering his brother, she made no indication of it which gave Cas hope for a good outcome when the Winchester family was finally reunited. 

The computer in front of him made a small, innocuous beep, and brought Cas’ attention to the fact that the numbers had stopped scrolling, and the map had resolved itself to a bright, blinking dot over Paris, Missouri.

‘Dean—’

‘Let’s go.’

Dean was already stalking through the library, pulling on his canvas coat, Colt revolver tucked into the waistband of his jeans. He looked no better or less ready to commit mayhem and murder than he had when they’d come back to the bunker a couple of hours ago. 

Mary sat up in her seat, folding the journal closed, and rising to follow without question. 

‘Dean, the trace program,’ Cas said, pointing at the screen. ‘It’s tracked Sam’s location to Paris, Missouri.’

‘Great. Bring it.’

Cas hesitated a second, watching Dean head down to the garage without a pause to even look at the screen, then he folded it up, tucked it under his arm, and followed mother and son. He wondered briefly if, given the time to focus, Dean would even need the address marked out in red by the trace program, or if the bond between souls was strong enough now to guide Dean to his brother’s side by feeling alone. 

Cas would not have been surprised if that were exactly the case.

 

Dean would have thought, claiming to know them as she did, that the hubristic Toni Bevel would have brought in some more hired help when her personal henchwoman hadn’t returned from her assigned bag-and-tag with Dean and Cas. He found her, however, sitting at a table in the kitchen of the abandoned farmhouse the trace program had lead them to, clutching a cattle prod in white knuckled fists, and staring intently at the screen of a laptop taking in live feed from a webcam.

‘That feed had better be coming from someplace real close by,’ he whispered in her ear, lover-soft. ‘Or else you’re coming for a ride.’

To her credit, she didn’t make a sound. Beyond an initial twitch of shock when Dean’s fingers closed around her throat from behind, she made no move at all other than to rise from her seat with the guiding pressure at her jugular and larynx. Dean wasn’t beyond admitting a little disappointment. After the earlier run in with her compatriot, he’d been hoping for a little more violence, and the drive here, with Cas riding shotgun trying to navigate while Dean preempted every one of his directions on intuition alone, had left an itch under his skin to tear into something and do damage. Although, the exact condition she would be walking out of here, if she could walk at all, remained to be seen until he had Sam under his hands. 

‘How did you find this place?’ she asked, not a trace of fear in her tone.

‘Well, your friend was kind enough to die and leave us her phone to trace back here,’ Dean said, not loosening the grip on her throat. ‘But you know what? I didn't need that. Not really. You wanna know why?’

‘Why?

Dean chuckled darkly. ‘Well, lady, if you really had any clue who we are like you claim to, then you’d know the answer to that.’ He spun her around savagely so he could glare down into her eyes. ‘You don’t _ever_ take my brother away from me, because there is no place in Heaven or Hell I won’t raze to find him, and I haven’t failed yet.’ He pulled his gun out, pushed the muzzle into the small of her back, and let go of her throat. ‘Now, where’s the feed coming from?’

‘Downstairs,’ she answered, chin twitching toward the door behind her and to her left. 

‘All right, _my lady_ ,’ Dean motioned with the revolver. ‘After you. Nice and slow.’

Toni did exactly as he instructed, keeping her movements slow and fluid. When she had her foot on the first step, Dean fisted her collar. ‘Wait.’ He turned back to Mary and Cas. ‘Mom, can you…wait here? Please. I need…’ He swallowed, not able to complete that thought. ‘It’s gonna be a lot for him to take in just to see me. Let’s give him one surprise at a time, huh? Cas, you stay with her?’

‘Of course, Dean.’

Mary frowned. ‘Why wouldn’t he expect to see you?’

Dean grinned and shrugged. ‘’Cause I’m suppose to be dead. Again.’

Mary’s jaw dropped and Dean turned away, nudging Toni forward down the stairs. 

 

Sam heard the door latch and then footsteps on the stairs. Sounded like Miss Accent-in-a-pant-suit had company this time.

He’d stayed out of the line of the camera for the last couple of hours, giving her plenty of time to stew over what he might be doing. She wasn’t likely to come down alone again after his last deception, and she wasn’t likely to worry that he’d kill himself either since he hadn’t the first time. Same trick wasn’t going to work twice with her. She was too smart for that. Didn’t mean he couldn't make her work for it though, ratchet her nerves a little higher with his silence. He’d heard her through the door, talking to someone, a child obviously, so she had things to lose. She may not scare easily, but she would scare. Eventually. The question was, did Sam have that kind of time.

His silent act wasn’t solely for Toni’s benefit. He’d hardly been able to afford to lose the amount of blood it took to make her think he’d slit his throat after the blood loss from the knee wound and the severity of the burn to his foot. He ripped off the hem of his shirt and bound up his hand, but it had taken a while to stop bleeding, left him lightheaded and seeing static if he moved around at all. He could at least sit up now, but he was in no shape to take advantage of her entry into the basement right now, especially not if she’d brought another 'specialist' with her.

‘Sammy?’

Dean… Damnit.

Jesus, this bitch was pulling out all the stops, and unfortunately she was pulling out the right ones. What had she done now? Some kind of hallucinogenic gas? Sam stuffed a fist in his mouth to keep from crying out in frustration. 

‘Sammy, you down here?’

‘Shut up!’ he yelled back. ‘Just shut up! My brother’s dead. You think you can fool me with that poor imitation? Think again! It’s a low blow, I’ll grant you, but you’re gonna have to get a whole _hell_ of a lot more creative than that, bitch.’

Toni stumbled into view as if she’d been pushed. ‘I’m afraid, Sam Winchester, your information may be out of date. It appears—’

‘Sammy?’

The figure stepped out of the shadows behind Toni, and Sam felt his heart stutter painfully behind his ribs. ‘Dean?’ It was a thin and desperate whisper, but Sam could care less. ‘Dean, you’re…?’

Dean grinned. ‘Yup. It would seem so.’ He gave Toni a shake by the back of her neck. ‘Well, it seems you’re in for a stroke of luck since Sammy’s alive.’ He shoved her away into the concrete wall and leveled the gun on her. ‘I'll make it quick. You’re almost a waste of a good bullet, you know that?’

‘NO!’ Sam lurched forward, tilted almost immediately between the pain of moving and the sudden change in altitude, grabbed the railing to keep from going all the way down. ‘Dean, don’t. She has a…she has a kid.’

Dean glowered at her, murmured a sharp epithet, then stepped forward and cracked her across the temple with the butt of his gun. He turned to Sam, grinning again. ‘Poor imitation, huh?’

Sam just stared, teetering, breath lodged in one great knot behind his breastbone. The wood of the railing creaked in his grip as he hung on desperately, wanting to believe this was no hallucination, but too battered and beaten to be certain of anything. 

Dean stepped forward, slowly, like he might approach a wild, wounded animal because Sam’s eyes were round with shock, and his lower lip was quivering. He stuffed his gun back in his waistband. ‘Hey, kiddo, it’s me. I swear it’s me. I told you I’d come, didn’t I?’

Sam blinked. ‘That was…you?’ Dean nodded, still reaching out ever so slowly. Sam shook his head. ‘But how did you? I mean. Dean…’

Sam’s knees buckled and in the next moment he was in his brother’s arms, firmly caught and held. 

‘Hey, little brother. Hey…I got you. I got you, I promise,’ Dean kept murmuring as he gently lowered Sam back to the floor so he could get a better look at him, assess the damage. ‘You’re good, Sammy. You’re gonna be fine.’

Sam buried his face in Dean’s shirtfront and whispered, ‘It’s _Sam_.’

‘Yeah, ‘course it is,’ Dean whispered in a soft press of lips to the top of Sam’s head. ‘Now, let me look at you, okay? Jesus, you’re a mess. Cas is upstairs. He ought to be able to manage something.’

Dean didn’t want to move, though. He had just exactly what he needed—Sam in his arms, whole, maybe a little scratched and dented, and he was still considering taking it out of that British bitch’s hide no matter what Sam said, but the point was Sam was alive. 

‘Dean, what happened? How did you? The soul-bomb, did it work? Chuck went missing and then—’

‘Sam.’ Dean pressed a warm, dry kiss to Sam’s mouth. ‘Babbling.’

‘O-okay.’

‘I’ll tell you later. I promise. Right now, though, we need to get you fixed up, and…there’s someone you need to meet.’

Sam looked up at him quizzically, eyes still a little glazed. Dean brushed another kiss across his mouth and then hoisted him up off the floor. 

‘Cas! Come give me a hand,’ he shouted up the stairs.

‘Should I let your—’

‘No.’ Dean cut the angel off sharply. ‘No, just come down here for a minute and give me a hand with Sam.’

‘Is he all right?’ Cas asked as he came downward.

‘Yeah, he’ll live,’ Dean helped Sam the few steps to the bottom of the stairs.

‘Hey, Cas,’ Sam said dazedly.

‘Oh, Sam… I’m so sorry.’

‘Not your fault,’ Sam said.

‘Hey, can you clean him up, Cas? You got enough juice?’ Dean asked.

‘Of course.’ Cas squatted down on the step where he stood and reached out two fingers to press them lightly against Sam’s forehead. Sam gave a tiny groan somewhere between pain and pleasure, and his body went slack in Dean’s grip. After a moment, he came back to himself, and tested his weight on his bare feet. 

‘Wow.’ He straightened up, but kept his arm across Dean’s shoulders, flexed the fingers of his slit open hand, pulled off the makeshift bandage and found fresh, pink skin underneath. ‘Thanks, Cas.’

‘Certainly,’ Cas replied. He looked over at Dean. ‘Your mother is getting very…anxious.’

Sam stiffened. ‘Mother?’

Dean sighed. ‘Uh…yeah.’ He kept his arm around Sam’s ribs and guided him up the stairs, felt the kid’s muscles start to quiver and resist. He paused and turned. ‘Sam, relax. It’s okay. Just…come upstairs.’

‘Dean, I…’ Sam shook his head, eyes tearing up.

Dean thought this would all probably be too much, but there was no avoiding it, and if he could make the introductions quickly and get Sam tucked into the car beside him and get them home, he could handle all the fallout later, on home turf. 

‘Sam, I swear it’s okay,’ Dean said again. ‘Come on.’

Dean lead him by Cas on the stairs, and Cas took up the rearguard as if Sam turning and bolting was a very real possibility.

Mary was at the table where Toni had been, watching the monitor screen, when they came upstairs. Dean kept Sam tucked protectively into his side, because he could still feel the kid’s knees wobble and shake. Mary rose from the table very slowly, taking in the very tall stranger in the room who was her son, such a contrast to the baby whose sweet, frightened face had been her very last vision of the living world. She came forward, one slow step at a time, hands held consciously still at her sides, until she was only a foot away. She looked up and saw in this man’s eyes, the same perfect kaleidoscope of color that had been in her baby boy’s. 

‘Mom,’ Dean said quietly, eyes still on his brother’s face. ‘This is Sam. Sam, this is…Mom.’

‘Mom?’ Sam croaked.

Mary smiled and cautiously reached up a hand to brush back a strand of hair that had fallen over his eye. ‘Hey, Sammy.’ Sam twitched under her touch, eyes wide. Mary cradled his face in her palms very carefully, brushing her thumbs across his bold cheekbones. ‘You’ve grown up.’

‘Mom, I—’ Sam pulled back, gave his head a shake as if to clear it. Concern creased Mary’s brow. ‘I’m sorry…Mom, I can’t. I can’t… Dean?’

‘Hey, hey, hey.’ Dean already had his arms around Sam, was pulling him down, tucking his head down to his shoulder. ‘Breathe, Sammy. Breathe for me. I know. It’s a lot. It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.’

Sam’s arms twined around Dean’s ribs and cinched down tight, his hands knotted in the thick canvas of his coat and fisted it until his knuckles were white. He clung there, like a little boy, curling himself inward and trying to hide in the circle of his big brother’s protection like he had done years ago. Dean held him, trying not to wonder or worry what it must look like to their mother. He looked over Sam’s shoulder to Cas, jerked his chin toward the door. 

‘Cas, would you…?’

Cas gave a nod and gently took Mary by the elbow and steered her outside. There was hurt and confusion in her eyes, but her face was placid, trying for acceptance, and Dean found he suddenly loved her all the more for that.

‘We’ll be with the car,’ Cas said quietly and let the door swing shut. 

‘Sam?’ Dean gripped the sides of Sam’s head and forced him to look up. ‘Sam, come on. This is Mom. I know it’s not easy, hell you should’ve seen my face when I ran into her in the dark. Could have knocked me over with a feather. She did knock me over, in fact.’ He smiled a little. ‘Took more than a feather, but… Sam, give her a chance, okay?’

Sam shook his head, trying to duck away. ‘Dean, when she—she finds out what I’ve done.’

‘Oh, hell no,’ Dean said. ‘Huh-uh. We are _not_ going there right now, Sam. We’re not going there ever, if I have any say in it, because it was not your fault, and she isn’t going to care. You’re her son, Sam!’ Dean palmed Sam’s cheeks, wiped away the fast flowing tears. ‘Sam, that’s all she cares about. She’s alive, we’re alive, and we’re together, huh?’

Sam nodded weakly. 

‘Okay, then. Let’s go home.’

 

The drive home was quiet if not exactly peaceful. Sam made himself small against the passenger door and pretended to sleep, and Mary very considerately stayed silent in the backseat next to Cas. When they reached the bunker, Sam waited until everyone else had gotten out before he very slowly followed. 

‘Maybe you ought to let me get him through a shower and put him to bed,’ Dean told Mary from the door of the garage. ‘He’s had a really rough couple of days.’

‘I’m starting to see that,’ Mary agreed, following Dean’s gaze to her younger son still fidgeting in the front seat of the car. 

‘Maybe in the morning things won’t seem so overwhelming,’ he suggested. ‘We can talk then.’

Mary nodded her assent and followed Cas out with a longing backward glance over her shoulder.

Dean did exactly what he said he would do and after Sam reluctantly came out of the garage once Mary was gone, he bundled Sam off to the showers.

‘Dean, you can’t,’ Sam mumbled, when Dean began methodically undoing buttons and snaps and stripping Sam out of his three days since clean clothes that were crusted in blood and mud. He pushed at Dean’s hands and tried to fumble the buttons himself, fingers still shaky with shock. Dean batted him away.

‘Sam, just let me, or we’ll be here all night.’

‘But if she…’ 

Sam’s voice was so pathetically close to a whine that Dean looked up, scowling. ‘She’s in the opposite hallway, Sam. There are bathrooms there. She has no reason to come down here, and it isn’t like she’d barge into a bathroom without knocking—’

Dean cut himself off as the tears welled up fresh and full in Sam’s eyes, trembled for a second on his lashes, and then spilled over. He paused, took a breath, and then reached for his brother’s face, thumbing away the tears, because this wasn’t about the bathroom situation at all.

‘Sam, you listen to me, and you listen good,’ Dean said, stepping up close in Sam’s space. ‘I’ve come this far with you, against the Hosts of Heaven and the Hordes of Hell. We've been this to each other, in one form or another, for nearly as long as I can remember. I’m not gonna stop now. Not for God or gold, and certainly not for Mom.’

‘But Dean, she’ll think—’

‘She’ll think what she wants, just like everyone does. If she can’t hack it, then…’

‘But it’s _Mom_ , Dean.’

Dean sighed in exasperation, planted a rough kiss on Sam’s mouth, and then went back to stripping them both out of their clothes. ‘That woman out there _is_ Mary Winchester, but Sam…the woman I called Mom? She died. The mother I loved is just a memory that doesn’t exist anymore. Maybe that woman is the same one, who knows? Time will tell, I suppose, but for now she’s just Mary Winchester.’ He lifted up from shedding his jeans, naked now, standing a few inches from Sam. He took hold of his brother’s hips and tugged him forward, forced eye contact. ‘I won’t let her come between us, Sammy. I’m not losing you, and I’m sure as hell not giving you up.’

Sam ducked his head to hide more tears, and Dean hugged him close and hard. 

‘Now, come on. Let’s get you cleaned up before the water runs cold and you pass out from exhaustion.’

 

They lay curled around each other later that night. Dean had locked the door to his room at Sam’s insistence. He supposed it was just as well. For all his talk, it wasn’t a subject he was keen to face anytime soon with their mother. There were too many other things to hash out before they tackled that.

‘Dean, what happened?’ Sam asked quietly.

He was finally calm, his trembling had quit, and he was was breathing easy, curved in against Dean’s side, head pillowed on his chest while Dean sifted slow fingers through his hair.

‘I guess I just convinced Amara that she was going to be a lot happier with her brother than without him.’

‘That’s it, huh?’ Sam chided.

Dean smiled. ‘Well, I won’t say it wasn’t touch and go there for a minute or two. There were a couple of times I definitely thought the fat lady was warming up on the first few bars, but…’ Dean paused in thought. ‘She was lonely, Sam. In the end, that’s all it was. She was lonely, and she wanted her family back—the only person she’d ever loved, the only person she ever would love, and would love her back unconditionally.’

‘But Chuck didn't love her unconditionally,’ Sam said. ‘That’s what started this whole mess.’

Dean gave a one shoulder shrug. ‘He got it in the end, though. They both did. That’s what counts I suppose.’

They lay in silence for a moment. 

‘And…Mom?’

Dean pulled Sam closer, felt the tension in the kid’s body notch up again. He scratched lightly at his scalp, and Sam nuzzled into it unconsciously. ‘Amara said I’d given her what she needed most by reuniting her with Chuck, and she wanted to return the favor.’

‘By giving you what _you_ needed most?’

‘Yeah, I guess.’

‘And that was…Mom?’

‘Yeah, well, you know, every boy needs his mother,’ Dean teased.

Sam was silent. Dean turned over on his side, sliding down the bed to put himself nose to nose with his brother. He traced Sam’s eyebrow with the pad of his thumb, then the long, straight line of his hawkish nose that he’d endlessly teased the kid about on school picture days, then moved over the planes of his stark cheekbones, feeling a pinch of melancholy at their loss of youthful roundness sometime back when Sam had watched his girlfriend burn alive because Heaven and Hell were so eager to see the end of creation, and God was on walkabout. He pressed his fingers against Sam’s mouth, felt him breathe in and out across his skin, warm and soft. 

‘It’s just proof of what I’ve always said, Sammy.’ Sam kissed the pads of Dean’s fingers. Dean slid closer, twining their legs together. ‘Even God makes mistakes, because the thing _I_ need most is always going to be you.’

‘Dean…’

Sam’s hand curled around the back of Dean’s neck and pulled him in to kiss him deep and slow with a simmering, languid heat. ‘Always, Dean. Always.’

‘It’s a promise, Sammy.’


End file.
